Jane Sibley (cleft nurse specialist at the John Radcliffe hospital in Oxford has been busy again! She writes:At last I have packed up the parcel and it’s ready to send to Bertha at CorSU tomorrow.
The box contains 100 bottles, 224 teats and 60 weaning spoons. The weaning spoons are useful to them as the surgeons like the babies to use spoons after surgery for a few weeks.
The parcel is very timely as I had a phonemail from Bertha last week saying that they’d run out of bottles and teats.
During the phone call, Bertha also gave me some verbal feedback about a baby that she’d given 1 of the bottles and teats to. This family lived a long way from CoRSU. She had given the mother the bottle and asked her to return to clinic the following week. Bertha did not hear from this mother for 3 months. After 3 months the mother brought the baby back to clinic at CoRSU. The baby was thriving and putting on weight really well, more than she would usually expect without the use of one of the bottles and teats that we supply. The surgeons were very pleased and the baby was able to have her surgery.
I would like to say a huge thank you to Carol Appleby whose son Teddy is one of my patients. Teddy was born with a unilateral cleft lip and palate and Marc Swan repaired his cleft palate 2 weeks ago. Carol always loves to hear about the work that Marc and I are involved in with Interface Uganda. She feels passionately about wanting to help the Babies at CoRSU with their feeding equipment and no sooner had I mentioned that I was about to send out another parcel, she had ordered 20 Mam soft bottles for us to go in that parcel- they were ready and waiting for when I went to see Teddy the following week at home for his post operative check!
I’d also like to thank Lesley Longstaff (my mother) who sold her hand painted cards at her local farm shop and church and donated the proceeds of £60 towards the feeding equipment. She too loves to hear the success stories of the work at CoRSU.
Rebecca Cook has also been amazing in collecting up some breast pumps for Bertha at CoRSU. These will be going out with the next shipment of bottles and teats. Bertha has fed back to me that the residential mothers at CoRSU benefit from using these which greatly increases their breast milk supply in those whose supply is dwindling due to inadequate hand expressing.
Thank you so much Jane for all your hard work in organising this.